Day: July 7, 2017

Tom Thomson on the 100th anniversary of his death

On a rocky, windswept point jutting into Canoe Lake, up a little trail in a sunny clearing, a modest cairn stands next to a gaudy totem pole. One hundred years ago, a troop of artists and admirers, led by the Group of Seven’s J.E.H. Macdonald, paddled to this very point to erect the memorial to their dead friend, the “artist, woodsman and guide,” Tom Thomson.

He lived humbly but passionately with the wild. It made him brother to all untamed things of nature. It drew him apart and revealed itself wonderfully to him. It sent him out from the woods only to show these revelations through his art. And it took him to itself at last. — Excerpt from the inscription on the Tom Thomson Memorial Cairn on Canoe Lake

It was here in Algonquin Provincial Park where Thomson found himself as an artist, setting out with his cedarstrip canoe and paint kit to collect inspiration for masterpieces such as “The Jack Pine <https://www.aci-iac.ca/tom-thomson/key-works/the-jack-pine>” on protracted backcountry sketching trips he began taking in 1912.

And it was here, at Hayhurst Point, where Thomson most loved to pitch his canvas tent, with the wind keeping off the bugs and the cool, murky water shimmering below; then, at night, the lights of the now-abandoned town of Mowat sparkling across the lake; a beer and warm bed and body only a short paddle away.

And it was here, too, on Canoe Lake where Thomson’s bloated corpse was found on July 17, 1917. He had set out on a solo fishing trip eight days prior on July 8 — 100 years ago today. He was only 39. (Continued: Toronto Star)

My 1st cartoon published in a mainstream paper was of then Fed. Foreign Minister Lloyd. Toronto Star, 1995

Hamilton and its daily newspaper was drawing me back, and it all began with a big giant bonfire and a black smoke plume that drifted off in the skies for as far as the eye could see. The festive atmosphere inspired the above cartoon and the resulting angry reader feedback quickly thrust me into the new gig that would bring much much more hate mail. Knowing the lasting effects of the Plastimet fire, and increasing numbers of firefighters dying prematurely in the following years, I don’t think I would’ve been as frivolous in my depiction. Yet it illustrates a popular sentiment at the time, and something that a photo or story can’t do on its own. It also presents how attitudes and opinions change over time, and in the time I’ve been a cartoonist, there has been plenty of that as I look back at my own work and wince and scratch my head.

1997 Introduction

I had been getting my illustrations printed in the Spec for a couple of years, but it was a brash young editor by the name of Kirk LaPointe who put out the call for a staff editorial cartoonist – a position the Spectator had abandoned when the great cartoonist Blaine had taken to retirement 5 years before. I don’t know what competition I was up against, but I recall doubting I was ever going to be the one who’d get chosen, and was probably the reason I showed up at the interview with Mr. LaPointe wearing shorts.

To the point of being hired at the Spectator my only experience working for another company had been in retail, mostly to grocery stores, wrapping up meat for customers, and destined to become a life long butcher. I joke that the pursuit of becoming a butcher happened in a metaphorical sense by becoming a satirist, carving up public figures on a daily basis.

Yet, even 20 years ago, the thought of a newspaper hiring an editorial cartoonist seemed pretty crazy. There were many many of them around in 1997, compared to now, and almost all had decades of tenure at their respective newspapers when I and a few others of my age came on the scene. Over the past 2 decades many of the greats, like Sue Dewar, Roy Peterson, Norm Muffit, Bob Krieger, Cam Cardow, Anthony Jenkins, Dale Cummings, Mike Graston, and Thomas (TAB) Boldt, to name a few colleagues just in Canada, have either retired, moved on to other jobs, or died.

The joke in 2008 was that all of Canada’s working editorial cartoonists could fit in a pickup truck. In 2017, we could probably fit in a Volkswagen Beetle.

A lot of changes have happened in 20 years. A lot. When I was escorted to my work area in 1997, I was given a table to sit at in a back corner of the editorial page cave. I could use Blaine’s old drafting table, but at the time he had been saying over the previous 5 years since retirement that he was going to drop by sometime to take it home (I think it hung around for another 5 years.) It probably took another month after being hired before I got a phone, and probably 2 more years until I got my first computer to use in the office. In the time between, and you can see the change in my style as evidence, technology in the form of Photoshop, has completely changed the look of my drawings. The Internet and social media has changed the way I deliver my editorial cartoons. This website mackaycartoons.net, has been archiving my cartoons since the year 2000.

On July 7th 1997 I became editorial cartoonist at the Hamilton Spectator. In that time, more than 4500 cartoons have been created in the past 20 years. Above is a slide show of 20 cartoons one for each year.